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Jiang Cheng leans heavily against the wall.
His breath comes in short huffs and he hunches into himself like he is in pain.
“Jiang Cheng, it’s alright,” Wei Wuxian approaches Jiang Cheng and reaches for the trembling hand fisted in his robes.
The impending contact makes his skin tingle. He wants to put his hand above Jiang Cheng’s and feel their shared core pulsing there, to find comfort in it like he always had in the youth a lifetime ago.
Jiang Cheng slaps his hand away the moment their skins touch.
“Do not touch me!”
Zidian sparks brightly in warning and Wei Wuxian thinks Jiang Cheng is going to make a mess of the study, but Jiang Cheng merely jerks backwards and the spiritual weapon fizzles out helplessly.
The man in front of him blinks rapidly, as if chasing flitting images of fire from his eyes.
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian’s hands hover uselessly, trying to calm his shidi down, "it’s all in the past. Everything is fine now.”
“The past? Is that what you call the widows who still beg by my gates come winter?! Every day I walk through these piers and fear it will be burnt to ash once more!”
“Jiang—“
“Of course, it’s the past to you,” his shidi snaps weakly,” but do not pretend that the people of Yunmeng live with their head in the clouds.”
They stare at each other. Jiang Cheng’s eyes are wild; the fear and pain swimming in them catches Wei Wuxian by the neck and looks like he’s about to regret his next words but opens his mouth harshly anyway.
“Return if you want and stay if you must, but do not pretend this place is the Lotus Pier you once knew.”
Wei Wuxian is shocked to silence.
The distance between them warps once more. The love in his heart curdles and cracks.
Here he is, a stranger in his own home, confronted with the truth and still so stubborn in the face of it.
Wei Wuxian takes two steps back. He picks up the teacups, replaces them on the desk, then fills them again with tea.
“What about you?” Wei Wuxian finally asks.
Jiang Cheng is Lotus Pier to him.
The new bridges and boardwalks turn the same way they used to; the courtyard is still made of greystone and he knows the corners and narrow corridors like he did as a child. The disciples still drink wine and swim in the evenings; the merchants in the market still call every passing cultivator pretty maiden and handsome brother.
It is its master that is mighty mystery, a blurry image of a boy he once knew, a beautiful boy he loved —
— loves, if only he knew how.
But Wei Wuxian does not know.
Jiang Cheng slides down the wall.
“Leave,” he pleads.
A lump sits heavily at the back of Wei Wuxian’s throat. He wants to hold Jiang Cheng and run his hands down his back and take away the sadness in his eyes. He wants to promise Jiang Cheng the world, if only to see him smile again, but he knows his words no longer hold any meaning to man before him.
He cannot touch Jiang Cheng.
He cannot leave either.
He sits on the other side of the desk.
Jiang Cheng starts shaking soundlessly.
There are no words for the way he feels, so Wei Wuxian merely opens his mouth and describes his state of being,
“I am here.”
—
Jiang Cheng eventually falls asleep curled up against the wall in the corner of his study.
He rises and approaches the sleeping man. He fears Jiang Cheng will wake if he touches his face, so Wei Wuxian sits next to him on the floor.
Jiang Cheng is warm, too warm, and his eyelashes lay heavy and wet against his red-blotted cheeks.
With a sigh, he slowly takes his shidi’s weight from the wall and Jiang Cheng collapses into his lap like a flimsy roll of fabric. The scent of their soap strokes his senses like a swinging pendulum, like the brush of a kerchief over his face.
Wei Wuxian feels like he’s taking something that isn’t his to have, like he’s stealing this instance of the universe and keeping it in his heart, locking it away, so that he will be the only one in all of eternity to bear witness to the air within these four walls.
Wei Wuxian lowers him down slowly until his head is pillowed atop Wei Wuxian’s legs.
He must be exhausted.
The moles on the side of his neck are just like they were — some are darker and some have faded, but the shape of the constellation remains.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes trace the lines of Jiang Cheng. The jut of his noise and the little freckles that adorn them look so painfully childish and out of place on this man who has been a sect leader for more than half his life.
Then, he slowly releases his shidi’s hair from its severe bun and sets the silver headpiece on the wooden floor with a little sound. The waves from being kept up for too long lose their shape and turn in all directions awkwardly.
Wei Wuxian gently presses the pads his fingers above Jiang Cheng’s ear and shuffles the strands softly, breaking them out of their stiff position.
Jiang Cheng does not stir. It must be the tea.
He brushes loose strands away from Jiang Cheng’s face and runs his fingertips along the dark rivers pointlessly, again,
Then again,
Again.
His fingers remain in slow motion until they are saturated with every bump and slide and part, every curve of the shape of Jiang Cheng’s scalp.
He keeps his head low and his back bent.
There is a little patch of frizz just at the crown, unnoticeable except by touch, and Wei Wuxian pilfers the sensation, places the specific memory into the corner of his mind that houses A-Cheng’s smile that one summer day.
Jiang Cheng is breathing deeply. His eyes dart about behind closed lids but he does not make a sound.
Wei Wuxian gathers the hair in his hands, like he has always dreamt of, and meticulously separates it into three neat parts.
His fingers move carefully, twisting each warm segment in the curve of his palm and placing them heavily on top of each other. The simple braid forms slowly and loosely.
He starts to hum.
It is a wordless song about endless skies and clouds shivering on the horizon. A song about wind and the river, memories of chasing a boy among the hills in spring. His voice breaks and turns heavy at the loneliness of the picture but the notes keep coming.
He wonders what Jiang Cheng is dreaming of.
He wonders if Jiang Cheng dreams of Lotus Pier, just like he does. He wonders what Jiang Cheng sees in those shared memories when Wei Wuxian’s vision is filled with laughter and sunlight and love.
He wonders if Jiang Cheng ever saw him that way.
Maybe Jiang Cheng doesn’t even remember.
He considers finishing the braid with his own red ribbon, but the image of his shidi awakening to a mark left by him brings him no joy.
It is late.
As the moment wears on, he feels like an intruder in this contentment he does not deserve. He doesn’t know who deserves this. He doesn’t know who has done this for Jiang Cheng in the eternity he has been gone from Lotus Pier.
It pains him to think there could be no one.
It pains him to think there could be someone.
It pains him to think it has never been him.
In the quiet, he leans over, just like that summer day on the pier, and presses his lips to his shidi’s temple.
For a second he indulges the notion that nothing of the past two decades has happened and tomorrow they will go pheasant hunting. The farce of it all no longer comforts him.
Greedy, so greedy.
He replaces his legs with a sitting pillow under Jiang Cheng’s head and drapes the robe hanging off to the side over his body.
Wei Wuxian tucks a final strand of hair behind his beloved’s ear and leaves quietly.
He leaves the braid open at the end, and he knows by morning it would have unwoven itself to gravity.
When he steps out, Lan Wangji is standing by the doors of the study.
Wei Wuxian still cannot find it in him to say a word. He knows Lan Wangji will not say a word either.
His hands smell like the fragrance of Jiang Cheng’s hair.
He wears it to sleep.
—
It is still dark.
Jiang Cheng awakens feeling like death.
Hair tumbles messily over his shoulder when he sits up. His scalp hurts. His head hurts.
He gingerly lifts the cloak draped around his body. The silver hair piece he always wears rolls quietly to the side.
He told Wei Wuxian to leave. He told Wei Wuxian not to touch him.
Wei Wuxian never listens.
He swipes the tea set to the floor violently.
This time, the teacups break apart
With a firm motion, he roughly puts his hair up in a style that vaguely passes as presentable and heads back to his private quarters.
——
Jiang Cheng is waiting to see them off at the pier right after breakfast. Cold indifference sits high on his brow.
Jin Ling stands at his uncle’s right shoulder, matching Jiang Wanyin in stature but not quite in poise.
The conference goes on for another two days, so Xichen-ge and the rest of the Gusu Lan delegates will stay. They follow him and Lan Wangji to the pier nonetheless.
Lan Sizhui trails silently at the back. He has not spoken to the boy since the events of yesterday. He can scarcely bear to think about the vision that prompted such hatred, let alone rest his eyes on Lan Sizhui.
“Wangji, xiongzhang will take care of everything here. We will speak of this matter when I return to Cloud Recesses,” Xichen-ge puts his hand on Lan Wangji’s shoulder.
They came to Lotus Pier to make sure nothing would go wrong during Lan Xichen’s first step out of seclusion, and yet here they are. Again. And Again.
It’s always him. It’s always Wei Wuxian, you greedy boy.
Lan Xichen looks exhausted, like he hasn’t slept for half the night but smiles despite the tiredness in his eyes.
The waves in Jiang Cheng’s hair have completely smoothened out. He speaks softly to the boatman and nods when the boatman gives him a parting bow and steps onto a wooden boat, the type that is typical to Lotus Pier.
“Hanguang-Jun. Wei Gongzi.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to leave, but he knows he cannot stay, even with Jiang Cheng’s concession last night. The other sects are almost up in arms about demonic cultivation, either craving its power or wanting it gone.
He is sure the following sessions of this conference will be a nightmare.
Gusu Lan has the political clout to protect him, and now he uses this privilege bitterly. It had almost destroyed Yunmeng Jiang, yet Gusu Lan gives it freely. At what cost, no one has ever told him.
Lan Wangji disregards Jiang Cheng and steps into the boat. Wei Wuxian hesitates to follow.
Today Jiang Cheng wears dark blue and Wei Wuxian wants to touch him again, wants to hug him tightly and keep his scent in his hands just like last night.
“I will come back,” he says.
“Do as you wish,” Jiang Cheng replies and hands him a thinly bound book. The healer’s notes.
Their fingers brush and Wei Wuxian savours the split-second of contact, but Jiang Cheng instantly recoils, like his skin is made of fire.
Do not touch me.
It stings.
“Take care,” he tries again.
“And you.”
—
He plays chenqing while Lan Wangji stands at the front of the boat with his eyes to the horizon.
He runs out of tunes after the fifth song and the silence grows heavy.
“Do you like Jiang Wanyin?” Lan Wangji asks hours later when they are halfway downriver. This time, there is nowhere to go except for the small space they share.
Thoughts of warm hair and apricot eyes rattle like dice in his head.
“How can I not?”
Wei Wuxian’s tongue feels heavy against these words.
He is so out of place.
“Lan Zhan, thank you.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji turns to him, gaze wide and mouth parted.
His expression is open and Wei Wuxian sees a million things in those amber eyes but he is tired, so tired of guessing, always guessing and guessing what Lan Wangji is trying to tell him.
And heavens he remembers the sheer relief of loving the man but the weariness in his soul is drowning him.
Wei Wuxian waits for Lan Wangji to say something, but only silence follows.
He sighs.
“Lan Zhan, I think we should part ways.”
-
He packs what little he wants to take with him before Lan Xichen and the rest of the delegation return from Lotus Pier.
He returns the jade token to Lan Wangji.
Lan Wangji does not take it.
Instead the second jade reaches up and extracts the delicate blue forehead ribbon from the complex do of his hair and deposits it in Wei Wuxian’s open palm.
There is firmness in his eyes, but Wei Wuxian finds no joy in carrying someone else’s mark on him.
Wei Wuxian catches Lan Wangji’s wrist lightly, trapping the artefacts between their hands. He had once touched Lan Wangji’s sacred forehead ribbon in ignorance and innocence, but now he presses the flesh of his hand into it with intention.
They remain for a moment.
Then, he slowly flips their hands over, transferring both items into Lan Wangji’s palm.
He will always owe his man his life, he will always look back on their memories fondly, but he will not yearn.
“Lan Zhan, I need to go,” it pains him to leave this life behind, because there had been some good in it, but now perhaps the goodness has run its course, and now perhaps there are dreams to be had below the clouds.
Wei Wuxian curls his fingers around Lan Wangji’s, closing the other man’s fist over the token and the ribbon.
“I would write to you, if you would have me as a friend.”
Lan Wangji’s eyes are fixed on something somewhere below chin.
“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian smiles gently, then steps away and pulls stubborn Little Apple down the first few steps from Cloud Recesses.
“Jiang Wanyin will not love you,” Lan Wangji calls softly from behind him. His voice wavers.
Wei Wuxian pauses, then speaks.
“Did it matter when you first loved me?”
He and Lan Wangji are more similar than most would think. Zhiji, that is what he had called Lan Wangji.
Someone who knows me as I know myself.
—
Two years and one summer after waking up in Mo Manor, Wei Wuxian leaves Cloud Recesses.